The Y Chromosome

by Leona Gom

  Delacour had told her of her decision the day, less than a week after the baby’s birth, that Delacour had asked her to come with her and the child to the cemetery. Surprised, Bowden had agreed: Delacour had never asked her to come with her before. She was even more surprised when it was to Jesse-Lee’s grave Delacour went first, not to Rhea’s beside it. Delacour knelt down, pressed her right palm into the soft soil of the grave, then took the child and pressed his tiny right palm, too, into the soil beside her own handprint. It was the old gesture of farewell, and of love, the one she had not made the day Jesse-Lee was buried. When she stood up, pressing the baby to her chest with both hands, she said, her voice so low Bowden could hardly hear it, “We have to give him back to the farm, Bowden.”

  Bowden nodded. She was not totally surprised. For the past few days she had seen Delacour looking at the child with such sadness, once with tears running down her cheeks, that she had begun to hope Delacour might be moving toward such a decision. She had said nothing, only waited, hoped.

  She took Delacour’s hand, the one that she had pressed into the soil, and held it to her cheek, and they stood there for a long time, looking down at Jesse-Lee’s grave.

  “It will get better,” she said now, gently, to Delacour.

  “I hope so,” Delacour said, her old querulous voice. “I hate feeling this way.” She batted angrily at a horsefly that was circling her head.

  “At least you know he’s where he belongs, with people who love him.”

  “I love him.”

  They rode on again in silence. A partridge flew suddenly up beside Delacour’s horse, and it shied, but Delacour quickly tightened her hold on the reins and got the horse under control. She had, Bowden observed, become quite a good rider.

  “Daniel asked me why I decided to give up the baby,” Delacour said suddenly. “And you know what I said? I said, ‘Because Bowden would leave me’.”

  “What?” Bowden was more startled by Delacour’s words than she had been by the partridge. “I never said I’d leave you.”

  “But you would have, in a way. You’d never have forgiven me.” She slowed her horse. “I’d intended to tell Daniel it was because I hadn’t the right or because the child’s not mine to keep, something noble like that, which would have been the truth, after all, I suppose, but — oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was just as well, to leave Daniel thinking I was still as selfish and untrustworthy as always.”

  Bowden smiled. “And you’re not?”

  Delacour snorted. A twig was caught in her hair and stuck out above her ear at a comical angle. “We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess,” she said.

  Bowden laughed. Yes, she was willing to wait and see.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With special thanks to Carolyn Swayze for her invaluable encouragement and advice, and also for their support to the Canada Council, the University of Lethbridge, and especially to the University of Alberta, which gave me the time and space to begin this novel in 1988. It was originally published in 1990 by Second Story Press and has been out of print for many years.

  Aside from a few corrections of typos, I have made no changes to the original manuscript. I would probably write with a different style now, but have decided to leave the novel as is and not to meddle.

  About Leona Gom

  Leona Gom is a poet and novelist from northern Alberta. She is the award-winning author of six poetry collections and eight novels. In 1980, she won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Land of the Peace and in 1986, she won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for Housebroken. Her novel The Y Chromosome has been used in women’s studies and sociology courses.

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